Thanks James, I must admot that my knowledge of the IRA is limited to hazy memories from my childhood and adolescence (dating myself). But for the analogy to hold, you would have to have a situation in which:
-- The British pulled all of their troops and police from Northern Ireland;
-- in the following 3 years, criminal gangs connected with the IRA kidnapped thousands of Englishmen and -women, held them in cellars and sent videotapes of them being dismembered back to their families;
-- the IRA imposed some sort of theocratic Catholic state on the lines of what existed in 1000 AD; and
-- and the IRA (led by an Italian) invaded Scotland in order to forcibly convert the Scots to Catholicism.
--- James Heartfield <Heartfield at blueyonder.co.uk>
wrote:
>
> Well, they did go in for a bit of kidnap
> (enslavement being largely beyond
> their means - or ambitions, no doubt), and they did
> send armed Irishmen to
> England (and even Scotland, sometimes), Brendan
> Behan was one of them, sent
> to Young Offenders Institute for his part in the
> war-time Livepool bombing
> campaign; and I did no one republican who was
> reputed to have been given a
> beating for his homosexuality (though that was
> exceptional); and the IRA did
> get logistical help from, amongst others, Col.
> Gadaffi, ETA etc..
>
> But Chris is right that their is a qualitative
> difference - I would say it
> was the context. In NI, there was a clear
> alternative of liberation v
> oppression. I am not sure that the Chechen
> 'independence' movement is not
> more like the Kosovan or the East Timorese -
> essentially an appeal for
> Western sponsorship rather than liberation.
>
>
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